Burgos
A big city, and you all know how much I love them. One big foggy pass to climb, not too bad when you can barely see where you're going, and lots of rocks, so mud is not a problem...until the descent. My bike handles it pretty well, yes it packs up in the gears, etc...but the wheels can turn. Dad and Brian have it the worst, Dad has to carry his, wheels packed so solid with mud they will not turn at all...it takes twenty minutes of scraping to get rotation. We pedal off, onto gravel, then paved roads, mud flying everywhere, like one of those pinwheel sparklers. We stop at the next bar and have some decent coffee and cake. I treat myself to a glug of brandy in my hot chocolate, this turned out to be a damned good idea, because the mud had not made it's final appearance for the day...outside of Burgos, the camino routes itself around the local land fill...lovely. Chewed up road, mud, rocks, our feet looked like blobs, the wheels had so much mud on them small rocks were getting rotated into the mudjams, plastic bags, sticks, you name it. There was a cyclone fence around the perimeter that the camino followed, so I lifted the bike onto the concrete pad it was set in, about a foot wide, with the fence in the middle. Not perfect, the bike had to lean over pretty far so the panniers cleared the fence, but not muddy, either...except the huge blobs called shoes. This went on for about an hour, Dad and Brian ended up taking off their panniers and carrying the mud-packed bikes out. It took another hour at a gas station to hose all the bikes clean. Jota is leaving us here, and Carmen joining us for the last week. Tonight we have a big dinner, and meet Jota's wife, Carmen gets to meet them too, and then tomorrow get out of this noisy place. There is a pretty stupendous cathedral, though!

David Russell